The last time I ever trick-or-treated for myself was unintentional.
I was in my second year (or third?) year of college, and my friends and I were going to go to a party. There was much discussion about what we would be, and this discussion was relevant because of Chiaki.
Chiaki was a foreign exchange student from Japan; she’d heard all about Halloween (of course), but she’s never experienced it in real life. We all went to the mall together. She decided to go as a princess. I decided to be the tooth fairy. Mainly, I think it’s because I already owned wings as every self-respecting college gal of the early aughts probably did. (Thank you, Hot Topic.)
But that Halloween night at the party, I got bored. It wasn’t that it was a bad party; rather it just I was unengaged. I asked Chiaki if she wanted to go trick-or-treating. This was possible because the neighborhood was upscale. The trick-or-treaters were still very out-and-about. And we’d probably get good candy.
I found us little sandwich plastic bags in the kitchen, and we walked out into the night.
Watching Chiaki trick-or-treat for the first time ever reminded me of the magic of our Halloween. She literally could not believe that a person could just march up to any door, knock on it, and get a piece of candy.
Everytime, a person did give her candy, Chiaki would look into her bag and say with wide-eyed wonder: WOW!!!!!!
As we trick-or-treated along the neighborhood, we even picked up a little posse. Two parents were out late with their little daughter. She was in regular clothes except for some paper leaves in her hair.
“I’m a wood sprite,” she said.
She joined us. So it was me, Chiaki, a little sprite and two parents lagging a few feet behind us on that Halloween in Hollywood. Oh so many years ago!
Such a fun memory!